Brussels: Raymond Leblanc [above], the Belgian publisher behind the global rise of Tintin’s comic-book adventures, died on Friday [March 21, 2008] at the age of 92, the company he founded said.

Lombard editions paid tribute to “the qualities of the man and of the shrewd publisher who contributed to recognition of animated books as the ninth art.

“In launching the ‘Tintin journal’ and the innumerable paper heroes it gave rise to, he goes down as one of the essential figures behind the international boom in French-Belgian comic-books.”

A resistance fighter during the Second World War, Leblanc convinced Tintin’s artistic creator Georges Remi to launch a periodical for the young. Herge had encountered difficulty publishing his work during the war.

The iconic boy reporter character had first appeared in 1929, with 12 books already under Herge’s name, but the association with Leblanc saw Tintin become the hero of a fortnightly magazine born in 1946 to immediate success.

Today, a giant statue of the character at their Brussels base is classed as a national monument.

In 1986, Leblanc sold Lombard to French publishers Media-Participations.

He was named the comic-book industry’s first recipient of the “Alph-Art d’Honneur” prize in 2003, at the 30th annual comic book festival in Angouleme, France, the industry’s main awards ceremony and show.

Lombard told London’s Times newspaper in May 2007 that worldwide sales of Tintin’s adventures had reached 200 million.

About Loren ColemanLoren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.